Hello Broken Buffalo Springfield (Again)

Buffalo Springfield Again is a dreamier blend of dysfunction.

Stephen Stills: lead vocals, guitar, keys

Neil Young: lead guitar, lead vocals on “Mr. Soul”, “Expecting To Fly,” and “Broken Arrow”

Richie Furay: guitar, lead vocals on “A Child’s Claim To Fame” and “Sad Memory,” co-lead vocals on “Bluebird” and “Hung Upside Down”

Bruce Palmer: (sometimes) bass

Dewey Martin: drums, lead vocals on “Good Time Boy”

Guests include:

James Burton: Dobro on “A Child’s Claim To Fame”

Jim Fielder, of the Mothers of Invention: bass on “Everydays”

Charlie Chin: banjo on “Bluebird”

The Wrecking Crew: Don Randi, keys on “Expecting To Fly” and “Broken Arrow” and harpsichord on “Expecting To Fly;” Carol Kaye, bass on “Expecting To Fly;” Jim Gordon, drums on “Expecting To Fly;” Hal Blaine, drums on “Broken Arrow;” Jim Horn, clarinet on “Broken Arrow”

The American Soul Train: horns on “Good Time Boy”

Gloria Jones, Brenda and Patrice Holloway, Shirley Matthews, Gracia Nitzsche, and Merry Clayton: chorus on “Expecting To Fly”

David Crosby: harmony vocals on “Bluebird”

Produced by Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, Jim Messina, Jack Nitzsche, Ahmet Ertegun, and “a variety of sympathetic recording engineers”

art by Eve Babitz

The only true Buffalo Springfield album is their self-titled debut. Even then, it’s debatable. The liner notes sheepishly say, “Steve is the leader, but we all are.”

Pictured: the back cover of Buffalo Springfield (1966)

This is the first clue to what went down making Buffalo Springield Again.

It’s no secret the Springfield had some big personalities. Stephen Stills ran his groups like a warboy runs a battleship. He had the vision, and he was going to execute it, come hell or high water. The problem with that is Neil Young. You can’t tell that guy shit! Neil was writing songs, but no one wanted him to sing them. Not the band, not Atlantic Records, not even Neil! He contributed five songs to Buffalo Springfield, but only sang lead on one: “Out Of My Mind.”

Then you have Bruce Palmer. You can’t tell him shit, and the difference is he’ll tell you so!

Buffalo Springfield, and its hit “For What It’s Worth,” earned the testy Springfield a loyal fan base on the Sunset Strip. But Steve had strong feelings about the risk of getting pigeonholed as a “protest song group:”

“Nothing would have been more silly than finding a list of things to get upset about, so that I could write some more songs about how upset I was...We were hassling among ourselves as to what to do next, because what to do next had suddenly become very important. We became scared – we didn’t want to blow it.”

quoted from: Peter Doggett, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (2024 ed.)

Over and over again, the Springfield would clip the edge of “blowing it.” They couldn’t help themselves: the big egos, love-hate relationships – and Bruce not being able to stay out of jail for more than a week, it seems.

In December of 1966, the Springfield arrived in New York for a ten-day residency at Ondine’s. Egos inevitably clashed: after getting bonked with his headstock one too many times, Steve punched Bruce in the face. While in the city (and Bruce presumably held a bag of frozen peas to his face,) the guys take their first crack at Neil’s “Mr. Soul.” As Shakey author Jimmy McDonough described, this session was “the Springfield’s Rashomon; no two people recall (it) the same way.”

Was Otis Redding there? Did Charlie Greene punch Steve? No one fucking knows! Whatever happened, it was Charlie and Brian Stone’s last session with the Springfield. They weren’t cutting it as producers – Buffalo Springfield sounds like it was recorded with a microwave oven – and weren’t great managers either. Neil alleged they absconded with $60,000 of the guys’ money!

That same month, Bruce was arrested for possession and deported. He snuck across the border a couple times, once as a woman, but he’s out for now. These two events, the “Rashomon” session and Bruce’s third drug bust, set the tone for Buffalo Springfield Again production; nine months of chaos, legal trouble, and pissing matches.

Through the spring and summer of 1967, increasingly ridiculous things befall the Springfield; including apackage tour with the Seeds, ’50s rock-and-rollers Rudy Dee and the Skyliners, and...the tour promoter’s twelve-year-old daughter?

In June, Neil peaces out from the band for the first time; recording “Expecting To Fly” with his new bestie Jack Nitzsche. For a long time, Neil maintained the Springfield landing the Johnny Carson Show was what made him leave. It was all too plastic for him. In reality, his splitting probably had something to with what happened to “Mr. Soul.” It was recorded with the intent of being the single and promoted as such, but at the last moment, was nixed for “Bluebird.”

By leaving when he did, Neil fucked the Springfield. Their Johnny Carson spot was cancelled, and David Crosby made an ass of them all at Monterey Pop. Bruce, who’d come back just in time for this mess, remembered:“Crosby stunk to high heaven. He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t rehearse...He came on for forty minutes and embarrassed us.” On top of that, Richie had the flu. When it developed into tonsillitis, theSpringfield had to back out of Newport Folk.

Meanwhile, ATCO is promoting this new Buffalo Springfield album called Stampede...which everyone seemed to know about but Buffalo Springfield!

Pictured: ATCO's "Stampede" sleeve (note Dickie Davis hiding behind his hat - he was filling in for Bruce at the time)

Neil came back in July-ish. Recording went on, but he had one foot out the door; setting the tone for the rest of his career. By the grace of god, the guys managed to get this album together by September: Buffalo Springfield Again.

This album is the way it is because a., Neil wasn’t in the band for a decent chunk of recording, and b., the studio was a revolving door because c., everyone’s having a lot of ideas and said ideas require serious manpower to execute. The creative spirit is here, but collaborative spirit isn’t. I wish I could talk more about the bass playing on this album, but Bruce wasn’t here for huge chunks of recording. He’s only on four of Again’s ten tracks, if the album credits are to be trusted.

Buffalo Springfield Again is more or less a Stephen Stills solo album and a Neil Young solo album combined, with a twist of Richie and occasional appearances by Dewey and Bruce. There’s no denying Stills. He came out swinging on Buffalo Springfield and bats a thousand with his Again cuts. Spoiler alert: almost all of them made my favorites. Of CSN, my favorite has always been S.

But then you add the Y. Unpredictable, changeable sometimes-Y.

In the Tonight’s The Night episode, said I “get” Neil. Only after hitting “post” did I ask myself why. The answeris in something he said:

“I would get so far into it that I would have trouble gettin’ out of it...that’s what would happen when I would have a seizure – I would keep lookin’ at something for so long, like I’d be readin’ a book and I’d get to a certain word and I’d just start lookin’ at the word. And I’d start getting right to the letter. And right into the granules on the page. And pretty soon I was gone.”

quoted from: Jimmy McDonough, Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography (2002)

Later in the same text, artist Sandy Mazzeo said, “I think that’s why he writes such weird shit. That’s the strength of his creativity – he’s been to all these far points where he’s only had himself to talk to. Most of his songs are just Neil talking to himself, really. The voice inside himself.” Neil agrees, at least in one case.

In September of 1966, the Springfield had a gig at the Melodyland. They’d hastily found a sub for Bruce, who had been – you guessed it! – arrested for possession. But the gig still wasn’t without incident. Suddenly, Neil collapsed onstage. The public thought he’d just fainted. It was really a seizure. Neil tried to keep his epilepsy a secret as not to affect the Springfield’s career trajectory, but his seizures would end gigs early – stalling the Springfield’s trajectory.

Manager Charlie Greene brought Neil to the hospital that night. There, he started writing Again’s opener. “My head is the event of the season.”

If “Changes” was Bowie’s thesis statement for his career, Mr. Soul is Neil’s. “Is it strange I should change? I don’t know.” It was recorded a few times with Steve and Richie on lead, but Neil and his whiney, unbothered delivery was the way to go. Could you imagine Stephen Stills singing “Mr. Soul?” He’d sound goofy as hell! This is Neil’s story to tell. In keeping with his modus operandi, he’s changed “Mr. Soul” a lot over the years. Atthe Greek Theatre two years ago, he played it solo on a fucking organ.

As per the Again liner notes, “Mr. Soul” is “Respectfully dedicated to the ladies of the Whiskey A Go-Go and the women of Hollywood.” There’s plenty of references to them in the lyrics: “I’ll cop out to the change, but astranger is putting the tease on,” Other interpretations see this song as contemptuous towards the groupies, but I hear that contempt directed to hangers-on. Neil said:

“...there were all these other people. They were always around, giving you grass, trying to sell you hippy clothes...I never knew what these people really wanted. And there were so many of ‘em!...all the clubs, places to go, things to do. I remember being haunted by this whole obsession of, ‘How do I fit in here? Do I like this?’”

quoted from: John Einarson with Richie Furay, For What It’s Worth: The Story of Buffalo Springfield, Updated Version (2004)

“I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her.” Neil articulates the surreal, uncomfortable feel of the fantasy land he finds himself in with baffling images that wouldn’t be out of place for a ’65 or ’66 Dylan. “Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster/For the race of my head and my face is moving much faster.”

You have to try to make Laurel Canyon’s go-to electrics, the Rickenbacker and the Gretsch sound like that. It wants to sound like the plinky opening. Not to mention the bass, it’s so fuzzed-out you only hear the impression of it. Others hear menace in “Mr. Soul,” but I hear playful. Its riff was absolutely lifted from “Satisfaction.” We know Neil is a Stones fan, see “Borrowed Tune” off Tonight’s the Night. The detuned strum ringing in the second verse and Steve’s excitable backing vocals (“Who said I upset! Her!!”) emphasize the playful. It’s justlong enough to leave you wanting more.

If you haven’t already caught on, a lot of this review will be spent on the Stills-Young axis. But don’t count Richie Furay out, man! A Child’s Claim To Fame might’ve been the first honest-to-goodness country rock of Laurel Canyon - before Gram Parsons arrived! I totally thought this was a two-minute ditty about a no-good, cryin’ lyin’ woman; accented with steady reliable country-built harmonies throughout and James Burton’s Dobro playing. Richie said it “was a cynical look at Neil’s leaving and coming back. I was just tired of that game he was playing.” “Make-believe is all you know/And make-believe is a game.” Richie agrees that yeah, Neil, fame is a fantasy land. But you’re playing in it too! Don’t try and say you aren’t. It was an interesting sequencing choice to put “A Child’s Claim” after “Mr. Soul.” Perhaps another not-so-subtle jab at fickle, flighty Neil.

The detuned guitar comes back for Stills’s first proper entry in Buffalo Springfield Again, Everydays. In Neil’s first absence, young fan Doug Hastings filled his spot. He was inspired by Gabor Szabo; particularly for the recording of “Pretty Girl Why.” Szabo is the most influential guitarist you’ve never heard of, and the first jazz guitarist to pay attention to what psych rock was doing. His signature was using feedback to extend and bend notes into eternity. Knowing where “Everydays”’s feedback accents came from, I could sniff out the influencefrom a mile away. Though Steve slows the tempo down quite a bit, he did a damn good job emulating the Latin-folksy feel jazz was hip too at the time. I can also sniff out the Crosby influence; this is such a Croz melody. Laurel Canyon was one great big feedback loop of influences! Again, Stephen cools things down a bit; a cool rock back on the heels before a samba forth. It gives his the ad-libbing, bordering on scatting, melody the space it needs to dance and glide.

Expecting To Fly begins with a glow; the last note of the song, slowed down and drenched in reverb. According to Jack Nitzsche, this was supposed to be the end of the song. But after Sgt. Pepper’s dropped in June and they found out “A Day In The Life” also ended on a ringing last-note chord, they swapped the beginning and end.

It’s as if we entered the magical clearing on Eve Babitz’s collaged album cover. We’re bathed in warm light. Butterflies, strings, and I think a clarinet flit in and out of view. The sparse drums act like wind through the trees; you only really hear them when you look right at them. The only thing in this arrangement so far we can feel our feet on is the strummed acoustic guitar. Everything else feels lightheaded.

“There you stood on the edge of your feather,

Expecting to fly

While I laughed I wondered whether

I could wave you goodbye”

Jimi Hendrix wrote about this in “Little Wing.” The free-spirited girls that hang around rock-and-roll are gone just as soon as they’re there. You see a pair of eyes in the crowd, you meet them outside the bus, then you go to the next city and they’re gone forever. By the time you come back they’re all grown up. I should know, I’m one of these girls. Neil captured this perfectly, in both the feather-light lyric and his harmony suspended from a high wire. He takes that ethereal feeling and pins its wings for a moment. The song stumbles into a waltz.

“Expecting To Fly” is about two of who I can only describe as Neil’s platonic groupies: Donna Port and Vicki Cavaleri. (Vicki apparently tried to write a film about their time with the Springfield; she instead published a two-part memoir in Broken Arrow.) Before reading up on the song’s origins, the lyric told me Neil knew these girls personally.

“By the summer, it was healing

We had said goodbye

All the years we’d spent with feeling

Ended with a cry.”

He goes on to write a whole verse about how debased he is as he tries to reach back into his memory for that dangerously free spirit. All he feels is how weighed down he is in this fantasy world. He stumbles and falls to the ground, fumbles around as he tries to reach for the love. He doesn’t belong.

“If I never lived without you, now you know I’d die

If I never said I loved you, now you know I’d try.”

Though he wants to, Neil can’t stay. He can’t reciprocate the love these girls throw at him. This isn’t his world. His use of the word “babe” guts me, because it’s all girls like us want to hear. Neil’s “babe” has baggage. It’s wistful and sad, more so with the fuzzed guitar. Just as soon as “Expecting To Fly” came, it dances away. The strings pull back. Merry Clayton & Co.’s sublime vocals (nicknamed “the pancake” for reasons no one quiteunderstands) bid us farewell. The golden gates close, we come back from the brink.

This isn’t just my favorite song on the album, it’s my favorite song, period. This is the story of my life. I’m moved so deeply by how Neil treats the girls in this song, the girls like us, with sensitivity and empathy. I’m not used to it. When I die, title my anthology Expecting To Fly.

Closing out side one of Again is another song for a dream girl: Stills’s Bluebird, Judy Collins. The bluebird of happiness seems to have flown away from her: “Deep within her heart, you see/She knows only crying.” Just watching her from afar on her branch is enough for Steve.

I’ll say it, we’re all thinking it. The long version of “Bluebird” is better. The raga section, probably lifted from Crosby and Stills hanging around Jefferson Airplane, made the song something really special. It was a greatshowcase of Stills and Young’s dialogue as guitar players. We don’t really hear that elsewhere on Again, so it’s a bummer to lose out on that.

Above: the full 9-minute version of "Bluebird"

The album version of “Bluebird” still has some meat on the bone, though. Say it with me folks: it’s not prog but it’s progressive! This song does a lot in four-and-a-half minutes. I’m impressed by how Steve infuses a song about such a sad girl with so much playfulness. The buoyant riff in the first section refuses to wait its turn. There’s no space between the grooves! Listen to how Steve turns up the end of a phrase like the corners of his mouth. The acoustic guitar tangles itself into a nest in the second movement. Steve’s beautiful falsetto jeers athimself: “Do you think she loves you? Do you think at all?” The jam pitters out into Charlie Chin’s banjo solo, then the song trails out as we bid bluebird goodbye.

Kicking off side two is Stills’s most underrated contribution to Again, Hung Upside Down. Forget the “Mr. Soul”-“Bluebird” kerfuffle, why wasn’t this a single? This is exactly what radio wanted at the time: riffy rockers with a twist and prominent organ. Richie takes the verses, while Steve takes the attack on the choruses. (And, of course, the very Stills grunts and ad-libs. Gotta love ’em.) He could craft a mean melody, on both guitar and in voice. I get the chorus stuck in my head all the time. The forward ascending “ba ba ba baa”s further tap it into your head. These two voices played quite well together. I’m sorry to say I mistook Richie’s voice for Steve’s for a while on this track!

Richie’s last he sings on this LP is Sad Memory. Somehow, through all the madness, he got three – count ’em, three! – songs on Again. He remembers “Sad Memory” as a happy accident: “I was waiting for Stephen and Neil and the rest of the guys to come into the studio, and I was just sitting out there playing the song with my acoustic guitar. Neil comes in and flips down the talkback button and says, ‘We gotta record that song.’” What a pleasant surprise! “Sad Memory” is another song about grappling with fantasy land and reality; this time of love and not fame. It isn’t much more than a demo. Just Richie and his guitar, indicative of the guys hooking up a mic and pressing record. It’s a wonderful, naturalistic moment on Again.

I don’t have much to say about Good Time Boy. It was Dewey Martin’s signature live number, but I don’t know if the Otis Redding thing works here, even on such an eclectic body of work. The Springfield had moved away from trying to capture their live sound on record at this point

In late 1966, the Springfield ventured out to San Fransisco. There, they saw Moby Grape at the Ark, and the Great Society at the Matrix. Steve must’ve heard Cupid’s arrow whizzing past his ear when he first saw Grace Slick, but he quickly checked himself. This was the lady who’d go on to attempt dosing Nixon, Steve knew she was too much for him! His other blue-eyed crush proved to be more attainable. Instead, he wrote Rock And Roll Woman admiring Grace from afar. Peter Dodgett said the song is “...tinged with sadness” and “like Slick herself, impossible to pin down…” Mischief is all over this song, Grace loved to cause some trouble. The lighthearted, mocking, sticky melody moves its way up from the guitar to Steve’s infectious “ba ba”s. Am I wrong in thinking he recycled bits and pieces of the melody and harmonies of “She don’t have to try” for “You Don’t Have To Cry”?

He has some fun fantasizing about what life with Grace would look like: going to places she knows and basking in how effortless but hard to find, even dark, her energy is. It seems he reminds himself of who he is: “Tomorrow, she’s a friend of mine.” Better luck chasing that bluebird.

“The broken arrow is the Indian sign of peace, usually after losing a war. A broken arrow usually means that somebody has lost a lot.”

quoted from: John Einarson with Richie Furay, For What It’s Worth: The Story of Buffalo Springfield, Updated Version (2004)

Broken Arrow is the pre-Bobby Kennedy assassination 1960s in a song. It centers around the mysterious character of the “brown-skinned Indian.” Neil did the “Hollywood Indian” thing while in the Springfield. Some interpretations suggest this character might be a stand-in for himself. “Broken Arrow” begins with canned audience cheers from a Beatles show, and Richie cranking out the first verse of “Mr. Soul.” This wouldn’t be the last time Neil started and ended an album he was on with the same theme: see Tonight’s the Night.

The first verse of “Broken Arrow” addresses the relationship between fantasy and real life. “The lights turned on and the curtain fell down/And when it was over, it felt like a dream.” That relationship is wrapped up in the one between artist and fan. “They stood at the stage door and begged for a scream/The agents had paid for the black limousine/They waited outside in the rain.” I appreciate how different thematic segments connect the verses of this song. Following a twisted “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” comes the second verse, about the draft. “Eighteen years of the American dream,” only to be shipped off as soon as you graduate high school. Though Neil’s epilepsy effectively sidelined him from the acid craze sweeping California in the mid-’60s, it gets a mention too. “His mother had told him a trip was a fall.” Everyone has that one trip they never came back from, physical or otherwise.

Someone in the comments of the Goodbye and Hello video compared its title track to “Broken Arrow.” It’s not a long-shot observation to make; the songs function the same way. They address the generational gap and the war, cycle through distinct verse and chorus movements, and indulge in the psychedelic. Why do I think “Broken Arrow” works and “Goodbye and Hello” doesn’t? “Broken Arrow” is just shorter. It can venture out-therewithout getting too lofty or repetitive.

A circus-act drum roll whacks out before it can be completed.

“The streets were lined for the wedding parade

The queen wore the white gloves, the county of song,

The black-covered caisson her horses had drawn

Protected her king from the sun rays of dawn,

They married for peace and were gone.”

I think this last verse is about JFK’s assassination and funeral, but these lyrics are harder to pin down. It could be about the Vietnam war. It could be about the general loss of innocence the boomers felt watching all these events play out on live television. Ends with the Jazz Theme, and a loud heartbeat. It’s a song you have to hear to believe.

Luck did not favor Buffalo Springfield. Again was released to critical acclaim, with such famous fans as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and one Graham Nash. But after the initial sales rush, sales sharply dropped off. In spring of 1968, they went on tour with the Beach Boys and the Strawberry Alarm Clock to promote the floundering LP. The first leg went well, but the second was a shitshow. Bruce was pulled over for speeding andbusted with weed, an open container, and an underage girl in his car! He didn’t have a license to be driving this car in the first place, by the way. Then got busted again the same night! He’s deported again, Jim Messina is his last replacement. Dewey played a show high on the ’cid and, in the middle of a song, whipped his shirt off and leapt into the crowd. The whole thing went up. Neil was supremely done with it all, but management begged him to stay just until the end of the tour.

In March, the Springfield was busted with Eric Clapton because of course he was there. Everyone was arrested except Steve, who fled through an open window to save himself. And, I shit you not, as the rest of the guys and their girlfreinds were sat in the paddy wagon, they started singing “For What It’s Worth.”

Pictured: Buffalo Springfield on stage, with Jim Messina filling in for Bruce

After MLK’s assassination in April, the rest of that last leg of tour with the Beach Boys was cancelled. Played their last gig in Long Beach in May. After cobbling together LTA, the Springfield were officially done You’vegot to remember that Buffalo Springfield lasted all of two years in its original run. They formed in ’65 and were effectively done by ’68. Last Time Around was a contractual obligation album.

You have to wonder why the Springfield given so many chances. The answer: they (Steve in particular) had an ally at Atlantic Records: Ahmet Ertegun himself. If I had to guess, he’s the reason Bruce got so many get-out-of-jail-free cards!

I think we all know which member of the Springfield I respond to most. But I have to emphasize that every songwriter contributed something to Buffalo Springfield Again that could be called a defining work. Richie introduced the distinct brand of country rock the Byrds would capitalize on in seven months’ time. Stephen Stills reached into his intricate but accessible bag; mixing and matching his influences with impressive agility. And Neil Young has officially announced his presence. He’s singing his own songs now. Again all feels stunted, but we know it isn’t. It’s not unlike a Sgt. Pepper’s or even a White Album. All sorts of ideas are happening: garage rock, country rock, psychedelia, bare acoustic numbers, jazz, Stax Records soul, and collages of sound.

The irony of this album’s title isn’t lost on me. This is anything but a sequel album and positively unfollowuppable. Cohesion be damned, Buffalo Springfield Again makes the untenable feel comfy and familiar, even dreamy. What a spicy combo of dysfunction and undeniable talent this album is.

Personal favorites: “Mr. Soul,” “Everydays,” “Expecting To Fly,” “Bluebird,” “Rock And Roll Woman”

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Watch the full episode above!

Doggett, Peter. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. New York: Atria, 2024 ed.

Einarson, John, with Richie Furay. For What It’s Worth: The Story of Buffalo Springfield, Updated Version. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2004.

McDonough, Jimmy. Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography. New York: Random House, 2002.

“Buffalo Springfield again: A Conversation with Richie Furay.” Goldmine, 9/13/2011. https://www.goldminemag.com/articles/buffalo-springfield-again-a-conversation-with-richie-furay